


Failing and Flying, Part II

by kanonkita



Series: Humanformers Aligned [4]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Blow Job, Cameos, Continuity Mashup, F/M, Fluff, Gladiators, Humanformers, Hurt/Comfort, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Masturbation, Pre-War AU, Romance, Sexual Dysfunction, seeker bros, sibling dynamics, skywarp as a sparkling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2019-06-13 19:01:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15371232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kanonkita/pseuds/kanonkita
Summary: Megatron wants commitment, Starscream is... almost sure he wants to swipe his Vcard, and a lot of other people just want both of them out of the way in this continuation of the epic sort-of-humanformers Megastar saga.





	1. In Which Megatron Asks Starscream a Difficult Question

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome back, continuing readers! And to anyone stumbling upon this story cold, you very probably definitely want to go read the first half or you'll have no clue what's going on. Also, if you're trying to read through my entire Humanformers AU, you'll want to note that this is actually Part 2 and that, rather like C.S. Lewis, I have not been writing this stuff in chronological order. 8P
> 
> Finally, as you will very quickly see, this half of the story is where all of the explicit content ran and hid. Enjoy.

The trip to the opera ended up being the last time that Starscream and Megatron went out in public, but far from the last time that they saw each other. It was a couple of weeks after that when Megatron first made the trip to Vos to visit Starscream at his own home. The trip between Vos and Kaon was only two hours, which meant that the gladiator could come for just an evening and head back to train the next morning if need be, and the lack of overnights meant that Starscream had all the conveniently built-in excuse he needed not to have sex with him.

Because that was a thing—in three months, he still hadn't so much as seen Megatron's spike.

It wasn't a lack of desire on his part. Sometimes, Megatron would just brush a hand up his arm, or turn and _look at him_ in a certain way, and it was like a bomb went off in Starscream's spark and all the extra energy went directly south to his interface array. No, the problem was far more complicated than a question of desire.

For one thing (and a prominent thing, it was), there was the fact that he was, in fact, a virgin, and what if they finally got down to it and he had no idea what to do and Megatron ended up leaving him for being a lackluster bed partner? Because no matter how much confirmation Starscream got that Megatron was interested in him as a person, the Seeker couldn't shake the paranoia that it was nothing more than an elaborate ruse to get into his pants. Which was terrifying in and of itself because if he was worried about that, then it meant that he wanted this to be more than just physical.

It was surprisingly nice, having Megatron around. Like, sure there was the whole having someone to make out with part of it, and it was a relief to have someone to talk to again outside of his family, and weirdly he _enjoyed_ arguing with the gladiator—especially when said arguing led into even more intense making out. There was all of that, but then there were other things. Things like Megatron texting him in the morning to make sure he remembered to fuel before work. Or the pleasant rumble of the gladiator's voice against his ear when they talked before bed.

Or laying half-asleep on the couch after a long, frustrating day at work while Megatron sat on the floor in front of him, helping Skywarp with his homework and stroking one large hand absently through Starscream's hair. Now, _that_ was the kind of thing that made the Seeker see what this whole long-term relationship business might be all about.

Not that he was ready for that. Relationships were what people did either when they were sleeping with each other on a regular basis, or when they were in love. Megatron and Starscream were neither of those things yet, but it could be difficult to remember that sometimes.

Especially when, after Megatron had put Skywarp to bed for him, the gladiator came back to the couch and crawled up on top of Starscream, wrapping his arms around the smaller mech and pressing eager little kisses to the sides of his face and neck until he opened his eyes.

“Hi,” Megatron murmured, grinning down at him stupidly.

“You're heavy,” Starscream told him, reaching up to stroke one of his sideburns.

“And you smell like ozone,” the older mech replied, burying his nose in the Seeker's neck and inhaling deeply.

“That's what happens when you fly,” Starscream yawned.

“So, I've been thinking,” Megatron rumbled against him, “what is this at this point?”

Starscream frowned slightly

“What is what?” he wanted to know.

“Us,” Megatron elaborated, sitting up slightly, and the Seeker felt his stomach drop. “Are you my boyfriend, or are we just two mechs who argue and cuddle on a regular basis?”

“I hadn't thought about it,” Starscream lied, looking away from Megatron's piercing gaze and starting to worm his way out from beneath him. “What... Would it _change_ anything if I was your boyfriend?”

Megatron sat up to allow his escape, but took one of his hands captive in return.

“I would feel more justified in my desires to entirely monopolize your attention,” he said, stroking his thumb over the skin on the back of the Seeker's hand.

“You couldn't do that even if you _were_ my boyfriend,” Starscream scoffed. “I have a sparkling.”

“No, but at least I'd have a valid reason to _want_ to,” Megatron hummed leaning in toward him, head tilted slightly. Starscream didn't move, making the other mech come all the way to him before parting his lips slightly for the kiss.

In all the time they'd been doing this, he still hadn't gotten over just how good a kisser Megatron was. He felt like the whole world lifted every single time the older mech brought their mouths together. The trick was not letting the gladiator figure that out because then he might think he had some kind of power over the Seeker. Which he did, in a way, but again—don't let him figure that out. Starscream would never live it down if he did. So, he exercised all of his self control and did _not_ follow Megatron when the jerk pulled out of the kiss far sooner than Starscream had wanted him to.

“We could do a lot more than just this, too,” Megatron murmured, pressing a quick kiss to the seeker's cheek and laying a hand on his knee.

“We could do that without being 'boyfriends,'” Starscream pointed out, and then wanted to kick himself as a sudden eagerness flashed through Megatron's eyes.

“Could we?” the gladiator purred, his hand starting to massage its way up Starscream's thigh.

“No!” the Seeker quickly amended, snatching Megatron's hand in his own before it could wander anywhere too distracting. “I mean... Yes, people _do_ , and that's fine and all, I guess. For them. I just...”

He wracked his brain desperately for some way to talk himself out of this without completely slamming the sex door shut in the gladiator's face.

“If you're uncomfortable with it, that's fine, Starscream,” Megatron spoke up before he could think of anything. “Either way, the fact of the matter is that I would like to be your boyfriend—officially. Even if it's just us who know it's official.”

Starscream swallowed. He did _like_ Megatron—quite a lot more than he'd ever expected to, for that matter—but he'd already spent several hundred millennia in a lackluster relationship that he'd agreed to just because he _liked_ the other person. Sure, there was a lot more sexual attraction in this dynamic than he'd had with Skyfire, but he also didn't know him anywhere near as well.

He lifted his free hand to the gladiator's stupidly handsome face and trailed a finger down the scar that ran from his left temple almost all the way to his jaw. Megatron turned his face into the touch, catching the smaller hand in his own and pressing his lips to the palm. Starscream curled his fingers, and Megatron kissed his knuckles, too.

“Starscream?” he murmured, lips still pressed to the Seeker's fingers as he looked over at him.

“I'm thinking,” Starscream told him.

“I want you,” Megatron told him in a low voice that made the younger mech's head spin. “And I mean that in more than just a physical sense.”

Starscream swallowed a couple of times before he spoke next, trying to replace the moisture that had just drained out of his mouth.

“Will you finally give me some respect if I'm your boyfriend?” he asked.

“I do respect you,” Megatron insisted. “I respect you a great deal. If I didn't, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now—you'd be on your knees, and I'd be halfway to an overload.”

Starscream made a noise of disgust and pulled his hand away.

“You do not respect me,” he scoffed. “You never listen to a word I say.”

“That's not true at all,” the gladiator protested. “I listen to everything you say. I just don't always agree with it.”

“Right. Because you don't respect my opinions,” the Seeker concluded.

“I respect your opinions very much,” Megatron argued. “You clearly put a lot of effort into formulating them, unlike most people. Your upbringing has simply left you ignorant of some essential facts.”

Starscream scowled. “And what happens when those 'essential facts' are something like my Primus-ordained duty to please you whether I like it or not?”

Megatron started back, looking almost as if the Seeker had just slapped him. “Starscream, I would _never_ —”

“You _just_ said that if you didn't respect me, you'd be making me suck your spike right now,” Starscream interrupted, knowing full well that wasn't what the other mech had meant at all.

“That was an example of how mechs who don't respect anyone treat each other,” the gladiator growled. “ _Not_ an explanation of my own interfacing habits.”

“Protest much?” Starscream muttered, folding his arms tightly across his chest.

“Starscream, I would _never_ take advantage of you, or... or _force_ you in any way!” Megatron tried to assure him, his hands held out in supplication. “What did I ever do to make you think that?”

He sounded so horrified that Starscream couldn't resist coming to his aid.

“Nothing. You didn't do anything,” he sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “I just...”

_I'm scared. I want this, and that scares me. I feel like I'll be trapped if I make an actual commitment to you. I don't know if I'll be enough for you. I don't trust you not to hurt me. I'm secretly a mess of a person, and you'll probably leave me when you realize that._

Starscream closed his eyes and shook the treacherous thoughts from his head.

“I'm tired,” he said finally. “I think I should go to sleep for tonight.”

“Is this your way of avoiding my question?” Megatron prodded.

“I thought you said you wouldn't force me,” Starscream reminded him, and the gladiator made a face.

 

* * *

 

It wasn't the best way to part, and the conversation burned in Starscream's mind as he peeked in on Skywarp (sleeping peacefully, thank Primus) and got himself ready for bed.

Boyfriend. _Boyfriend._ Megatron as his boyfriend... The idea had far more appeal than that of himself as Megatron's boyfriend. The idea of anyone having reason to think they somehow possessed him was just... But he didn't want to lose Megatron, either. How long could he drag out the question of commitment before the gladiator got impatient and left him? Probably a lot longer if he was having sex with him, but then he actually had to have sex with him.

Sex with Megatron... he mused, staring at the ceiling some twenty feet above his bed. It was a common topic in his thoughts these days, truth be told. When he wasn't actually with the mech, he had no problem imagining what it would be like to lie beneath him, legs splayed and vents desperate while his valve stretched to accommodate whatever body part the gladiator was using to pleasure him in that particular fantasy. His favorite was envisioning how Megatron might comfort him during their first time, stroking his hair and gently talking him through the pain in that low rumble of his until pain shifted to pleasure and they ended up passionately entwined in one another.

Starscream sniffed as he felt heat gathering in his gut. He hesitated a moment before sliding a hand down his pants.

This was another thing he did, somewhat guiltily, when Megatron wasn't around. Sometimes, he just needed some relief, although the simple fact was that he never truly got it.

Because that was one of the other reasons that Starscream was still a virgin: in the two million years since his interface array had come online, he'd overloaded exactly twice. Once was the first time he'd ever used his spike, and the other had been a random fluke that caught him entirely by surprise. Maybe he'd be able to climax with another person doing some of the work, or with more internal stimulation, but... what if he didn't? What if he finally got together with someone and found that he just couldn't overload? How much of an embarrassment that would be!

Starscream stroked a finger over his node in an attempt to distract himself. Whether he overloaded or not, at least this still felt good. Would it feel better if Megatron were to do it, or the same? He pictured the gladiator pushing his hand aside and replacing it with his own, and let out a contented sigh, slipping his fingers further down. A substantial amount of valve lubricant met him, and he made a face.

Were people really okay touching each other’s messes like this? What if Megatron wanted him to touch his valve and he couldn’t bring himself to? What if he wanted Starscream to put his _mouth…_

The Seeker shuddered at the thought of putting his mouth anywhere on Megatron's intimate array and pulled his fingers back up to play with his node instead. Surely, they’d work around it, whatever came up.

He kept working himself at varying speeds for several minutes to no avail. He needed _more_. It was like having an itch deep inside himself that he couldn't quite scratch. With a slight grimace, he slid his other hand down himself, past the first, and carefully pressed his middle finger past the entrance of his valve. Starscream spread his legs a bit more with a small moan of contentment as the slight burn faded into enjoyment. If he wriggled his finger just right, he could almost scratch that itch. If he could just get a little bit deeper...

The Seeker drew his legs together with a sharp gasp of pain as he pushed too far and rammed his nail straight into his seal. For a moment, all he could do was lie perfectly still, breathing in short, sharp bursts, until the pain subsided. Eventually, he pulled his hands out of his pants with a sigh and went to wash them off.

It was frustrating, really, and not just the lack of overload—he was used to that. He'd gotten himself all amped up to sleep with Megatron before their first date, and when it hadn't happened he'd just... lost his nerve and fallen back into the comfortably familiar pattern of abstinence. If he wasn't careful, he was going to end up dying a lonely virgin.

 

* * *

 

Normally, Megatron wouldn't have bothered with the relationship status talk. He was accustomed to meeting mechs he liked, sleeping with them a few times, and then if they were still seeing each other socially instead of just sexually after that, he would start referring to them as his boyfriend. Starscream was different, though.

So far, the two of them had _only_ done relationship things together: hanging out at Starscream's house, meeting his little brother, constantly texting each other during the day, cuddling on the couch to watch a movie and _not having sex afterward..._ It wasn't that he minded doing any of those things with Starscream so much as that there were other things that he really wanted to add to their activities list, and every time he tried, Starscream find some way to avoid it.

Megatron had narrowed it down to two possible reasons that the Seeker wouldn't have sex with him: either his high caste upbringing called for abstinence outside of committed relationships, or he just didn't want to. Thus, the relationship talk—if Starscream was waiting for a more definite nature to their relationship before he'd let Megatron into his bed, then the gladiator was perfectly willing to establish one. Unfortunately, Starscream had sounded very much like he was trying to find some excuse not to be any more intimately connected with him than he already was, and it seemed Megatron's happy dreams of sharing his bed with a pretty, little Seeker were all going to come to naught.

But he didn't have the luxury of worrying about it half so long as he would have liked.

“Explain to me, Switchback, how all of this is _my_ fault,” the gladiator groaned at his manager as he tried to massage the oncoming headache out of his forehead.

“You weren't _here!_ ” the oily little mech whined at him. He was wringing his hands incessantly the way he did when he was determined to say something he knew people wouldn't like. “You were off frolicking with Seekers again, and no one else here knows how to deal with these situations properly, so what did you expect to happen!?”

Megatron looked over the half-destroyed ring and scowled. He always turned his comms off when he was with Starscream, so he hadn't found out what happened until he was already halfway home. Apparently, a gang of mechs from Cutthroat's old ring had shown up and vandalized his own. The pressure from the other ring manager to pay up on his own losses had only gotten worse over the last few months, but this was the first time it had been more than just annoying.

He turned to Soundwave, who had been hovering silently by his shoulder this whole time.

“And where were _you_ when this happened?” he wanted to know.

Soundwave's mask fritzed slightly, like a digital cough, and the other mech turned away.

“Oh, don't give me that!” Megatron huffed. “You and the others could've taken those guys if you'd tried. Did you all just have your thumbs up your afts, or something!?”

“They weren't here, either!” Switchback despaired. “Soundwave, Tripwire, Grind... All of our star fighters apparently decided to take a little holiday last night because that's what _you_ were doing! I told the ones who were left not to try because I didn't feel like losing fighters _and_ property.”

Megatron frowned at that. “I'll accept that I've been away from the ring more than I maybe should have lately, but you're not pinning everyone else's slacking on me.”

“Well, who am I supposed to pin this on? And what are we going to do about this mess?!” his manager demanded. “I don't suppose that fancy boyfriend of yours would be willing to shell out a few mill to fix this up by the weekend's matches?”

“He's not my boyfriend,” Megatron growled, more than a little annoyed at the reminder.

“Yeah, well, whatever he is, he'd better hurry up and start paying me back for all of your time that he's been monopolizing,” Switchback grumbled.

“I'm going to bed,” the gladiator grumbled, deciding to take a leaf out of Starscream's book and just get out of this situation for now.

“You can't just leave! We have to figure this out!” Switchback whined at him as he turned for the exit that would lead back down to the private quarters beneath the ring.

“It's 3 in the morning, Switchback. The ring will be just as broken at noon, and so will be anyone who tries to wake me up before then!” Megatron snarled over his shoulder.

His manager sputtered at him for a moment and then kicked at a bit of rubble with a roar of frustration. Megatron ignored him. He wanted nothing but to sink into his bed and be done with this day. The sooner he fell asleep, the sooner an appropriate amount of time would pass to message Starscream again. Or maybe he should wait for the Seeker to message him...

The sound of careful footfalls echoing through the corridor behind him broke through Megatron's thoughts, and he turned to see Soundwave come to a halt a few paces away.

“Where _were_ you, anyway?” he demanded. There was a pause, during which the younger mech reached up to pick at his mask in an uncharacteristic display of emotion.

“Here,” he said finally. “Soundwave; in.... in Tripwire's quarters. Distracted.”

Megatron's eyebrows shot up as the million signals he'd missed started stacking up in his memory. But that couldn't be right. Soundwave and Tripwire were _close_ , yes, but they weren't... Were they!?

“When you say 'distracted,' you don't mean....” He searched for any words that could possibly encompass such an unthinkable event.

“Engaged in intimate relations,” Soundwave clarified.

Well.

“Well...” He coughed. “How long has that been going on?”

“Six months.”

“SIX MO...!! You... Okay. Okay.” Megatron took a deep breath, trying to wrap his head around all of this. So, Soundwave and Tripwire—two of the least sociable or conventionally attractive people he knew—could work their way into a relationship right under his nose, but _he_ couldn't use all of his Primus-given assets to snag the one mech he really wanted.

“Megatron; upset...?” Soundwave ventured, cocking his head uncertainly.

“No, I'm not upset, Soundwave. I just...” He dragged a hand over his face. “I need sleep. We'll talk in the morning.”

The other mech nodded, and didn't follow this time when Megatron started off down the hall again.

 


	2. In Which Starscream is Overly Sensitive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are you ever just SO DONE with a chapter? Lol I apologize if there are any awkward spots in this one. I had to force myself to stop editing because I ended up completely rewriting every single scene every time I read through it...

School had never been Skywarp’s favorite place. For one thing, there were too many other sparklings there. It wasn’t that he had anything against any of his peers on an individual basis, but when they were together in a group, they all started operating on some weird set of rules that no one had bothered to teach Skywarp. Most days, they’d be playing together just fine, his classmates laughing at something he’d done or said, and then a second later he’d do something else and suddenly they’d all be mad at him or telling him he was gross or something. It made no sense.

And then there were the teachers!

“Skywarp, sit still!”

“Skywarp, stop staring out the window!”

“Skywarp, be quiet!”

“Skywarp, don’t draw on your desk!”

“Skywarp, put the glitchmice back in their cage!”

He hated all of them. Well,  _ almost _ all of them. Principal Torrent was actually a lot cooler than most of the other sparklings gave him credit for. Skywarp would know as he visited Torrent’s office at least once a day. Sometimes, the old mech would let him color in the corner for a while before sending him back to class.

But most of the teachers, he hated. Especially his classroom teacher, Feedback. She just wouldn’t believe him that his inability to read had nothing to do with a lack of effort. Skywarp  _ wanted _ to read. How many times had he seen his father poring over a datapad in his study with that serious look on his face that made him seem so cool and grown up? Or sat in his mother’s lap and traced a finger along the incomprehensible glyphs as she read aloud to him? And Starscream  _ always _ had his nose in a book or datapad unless his friend Megatron was visiting, and then they  _ talked _ about the books. If Skywarp could read too, then maybe his brother would pay more attention to him.

So, yes, he was  _ trying _ to learn how to read, but the stupid glyphs just kept moving around on the page. Sometimes they were there, sometimes they weren’t. Sometimes they were upside down, sometimes they were backward, and sometimes similar glyphs would turn into each other. The other day, he’d read, “The fast dog runs,” as “Fat feet step on the grass.” Feedback had told him he should have known it was wrong because it made no sense, and Skywarp had said he thought Feedback was writing about her own fat feet. No one thought it was funny.

Luckily, Skywarp had discovered a trick to avoiding school.

Ever since that time when Starscream had abandoned him with their aunt overnight, the older Seeker had started leaving his bedroom door unlocked, and Skywarp had started crawling into his bed more and more in the early hours of the morning, which was how he had discovered how easy it was to convince his brother that they should just stay home on any given day.

Skywarp had known for a while that the foreign emotions echoing around his chest on occasion were his brothers’, but he’d only just recently discovered that it was possible to pull on them and get more or push his own emotions back at them. Of course, usually, the two adult Seekers would block him, but a half-asleep Starscream lying right beside him was the only kind of open book Skywarp could read with anything like ease. 

A good deal of it made no sense, but there was usually an overall “color” to Starscream’s emotions that he could work with. Red was the best. Red Starscream only took a tiny bit of prompting to decide that they should take adventures instead of going to school. Purple Starscream was liable to stay in bed and want to sleep most of the day, but at least he didn’t make Skywarp go to school. Yellow Starscream…  _ probably _ wouldn’t make Skywarp go to school, but he was also the one most likely to lose his temper. 

After visits from Megatron, Starscream was always some shade of red, so Skywarp was more than a little eager as he tiptoed into his brother’s bedroom the morning after the mech’s most recent visit, Striker padding along behind him, and climbed up onto the bed… only to find that Starscream was yellow. Very, very yellow with a tinge of green. The worst Starscream. Oh, dear.

Skywarp hesitated at the edge of the mattress, frowning at the older Seeker’s sleeping face in the blue-ish morning light and wondering what could have possibly happened to ruin a perfectly good chance at a hooky day, until the mattress dipped beside him and Striker went plodding over to lick at his brother’s ear. 

Starscream groaned and rolled over, pulling his pillow up over his face. The dog stared despondently at the barrier for a moment before draping himself across the Seeker’s lower back instead. When this didn’t result in any kind of outburst, Skywarp felt bold enough to edge closer as well and settle in beside his brother. Starscream made no acknowledgment of his presence except a heavy sigh. Perhaps he could salvage this somehow.

“Star?” he hissed. “Star, are you awake?”

His brother grunted at him in acknowledgment.

“I had a dream we went to the zoo, and you found a lot of super cool rocks,” Skywarp invented as his gaze found the colorful array of rocks in the collection case on the far wall. 

“That’s nice, Warp,” Starscream mumbled from beneath the pillow, and the sparkling frowned. Perhaps he needed to be more obvious.

“I think maybe we should go there today because maybe the rocks are there for real,” he tried. “We should get them to put on your shelves.”

“Those are for rocks from other planets,” his brother reminded him.

“The ones in my dream were from another planet, too,” Skywarp insisted.

“Warp, it was a dream. There aren’t really space rocks at the zoo.”

“There might be! I think we—”

“Waaaarp, please!” his brother cut him off, emerging from beneath the pillow at last. “I’m so stressed, I barely slept at all last night, so either be quiet or go back to your room.”

Skywarp pouted at the back of Starscream’s head for a minute before dropping his gaze to where the blanket had slid down to expose the adult Seeker’s bare back and wings. Like so many things about him, Starscream’s wings were almost identical to their mother’s.

Skywarp reached a tentative finger out to brush the familiar streak of red embedded in the white. His brother didn’t react to the light touch, so the sparkling moved his finger up to trace the edge of the curve, fascinated as always at the way metal disappeared into skin.

Starscream jerked away from him with a yelp.

“Warp, don’t  _ do _ that!” he snapped, dislodging Striker as he rolled over.

“Why not?” Skywarp wondered, shrinking back slightly.

“Because I don’t like it!” Starscream told him.

“Does it hurt?”

“When you dig your nails into the seam like that,  _ yes! _ ” Starscream grumbled, settling back down on his side to scowl at his little brother.

“I wasn’t  _ digging my nails _ in,” the sparkling protested. “I was just touching.”

“Well, don’t touch people without—” He was interrupted by a dog tongue, which he pushed away with a hiss. Striker whined and moved away to settle by their feet. “Don’t touch people without permission—especially not their wings.”

“Mommy and Daddy never care,” Skywarp argued. 

“That’s because old Seekers’ wings aren’t very sensitive anymore. Mine are.”

“Well, can I touch them?” he wanted to know.

“No,” came the immediate answer.

This wasn’t fair in Skywarp’s book. He didn’t have any wings of his own yet, and Starscream’s were so pretty. Besides… 

“You let T.C. touch them!” Skywarp protested.

“I let T.C.  _ massage _ them,” Starscream corrected, rolling his eyes as he turned over onto his back. “Which is different, and he knows how to do it without making it… without hurting me. Anyway, when yours grow in, you shouldn’t let anyone but me or T.C. even do that.”

“Why not?” Skywarp wondered.

“Because it’s inappropriate! No one except your family should ever see your wings.”

“Oh.” Skywarp considered that, and then a memory surfaced from a week or two ago. 

It was one of the times when Megatron was visiting. Skywarp had decided to sneak down to the kitchen after he’d been sent to bed and steal some rust sticks. Unfortunately, he’d made it down there only to find the two adults already in the kitchen. Starscream had been sitting on the island counter in the middle of the room with Megatron stood very close in front of him. They’d been talking in low voices that Skywarp couldn’t hear, but he most certainly  _ had _ seen Megatron’s hands lifting his brother’s shirt to carefully trace up and down the edges of his wings. Skywarp had gone back upstairs in a sulk without thinking much of it, but…

“Is Megatron family?” he asked.

“What? No! What gave you that idea?” Starscream scoffed.

“Because you let  _ him _ touch your wings, and it wasn’t even massaging,” the sparkling announced triumphantly.

His brother stiffened suddenly, turning to Skywarp with a look that wasn’t quite anger but sent a trill of apprehension through the sparkling anyway. He tried to get a read on the older Seeker’s mood, but Starscream was awake enough by now that his usual blocks were back in place.

“ _ When did you see that? _ ” Starscream demanded in a low hiss.

And Skywarp hesitated, mind reeling as he tried to think of an appropriate answer. He couldn’t very well admit that he’d been sneaking out of bed in the middle of the night, after all.

“There was… Last night! You were laying on the couch and he was rubbing your wings,” the sparkling invented hastily. He hadn’t been paying that much attention, so for all he knew Megatron  _ had _ touched Starscream’s wings at some point last night. Starscream was asleep half the time anyway, so what would he know?

“He put his hand up my shirt?” his brother asked, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

“Uh-huh. While you were asleep,” Skywarp emphasized.

“And you were watching?”

“Y...yeah.” Skywarp felt the triumph melt away as his brother’s face shifted into something that was definitely the beginnings of anger.

“And he  _ knew _ you were watching?”

Skywarp didn’t know why this was upsetting his brother, but he knew that he needed to choose his next answer carefully or there could be repercussions. Today’s Starscream was a yellow Starscream, after all.

“Yes?” he guessed.

He’d guessed wrong.

A sudden flaring of Starscream’s nostrils was all the warning Skywarp got before his brother shot upright with a scream of, “I  _ KNEW _ IT!!!” The sparkling jolted up too, and Striker went skittering off the bed as the older Seeker hurled a pillow across the room with another scream.

Skywarp stammered wordlessly, trying to figure out what he possibly could have done wrong to elicit such a reaction. It was so hard to tell with Starscream; he got mad about such strange things.

“Stupid, stupid,  _ stupid _ ,” Starscream was snarling now as he shoved himself off the bed and started to pace the room. “I fragging  _ knew _ it! I can’t believe I _ fell _ for the whole thing!!” He kicked at a pile of books, sending several flying around the room, and started to scream, grabbing a handful of hair in each hand. Striker howled along with him, and Skywarp felt his lower lip start to tremble. 

What had he said wrong  _ this _ time? And why was his brother so  _ difficult? _

Starscream finally stopped screaming and stood in the middle of the room, breathing heavily with his hands still clenched in his hair. Skywarp jumped down from the bed and ran from the room before his brother had a chance to notice him.

“Warp? Warp,  _ wait! _ Oh, Primus, I’m not angry at you!” he heard Starscream call out behind him, but Skywarp didn’t stop until he’d locked his bedroom door behind himself.

 

* * *

 

It was only eight in the morning when Megatron’s comm started buzzing on his desk. He groped for it blindly, intending to put the fear of the Unmaker in whoever was disturbing him so early, only to grab hold of it and see the adorably awkward candid photo he’d snapped for Starscream’s caller ID pouting up at him.

The gladiator hastily cleared his throat a couple of times before picking up.

“Hey, you,” he purred.

“ _ Shut up! _ ” Starscream snapped back at him. “Just shut up, you stupid, groping…” The Seeker cut off with what sounded like a growl of frustration.

Megatron sat up, blinking in confusion. “Starscream, what—”

“In front of my little brother!?  _ Really!? _ ” the other mech interrupted. “What happened to respecting me!? Or does that only count when I’m awake enough to notice!?”

“Starscream, I have  _ no _ idea what you’re going on about!” Megatron protested, starting to feel rather like someone had punched him in the gut.

“That’s what I  _ thought _ you’d say, you dumb, fragging  _ oaf! _ Well, you can find someone else to be your submissive little boy toy!  _ Frag! _ I can’t believe I thought you were  _ different! _ ”

And then the line disconnected, leaving Megatron staring at his bedroom wall with the distinct impression that he’d just been verbally slapped across the face.

 

* * *

 

Halfway through the day, Thundercracker got a text from his older brother. It simply read, “SOS” with an animation of a supernova at the end. He frowned at it for a minute, trying to decide if this was a legitimate emergency or just Starscream freaking out over nothing again.

_ :Something happen to Warp?: _ he shot back, and tried to focus on the expense report he was supposed to be filing. If Thundercracker had known just how much paperwork was involved in being part of the Air Command, he probably would have gone and joined the Wreckers instead.

Barely a minute passed before he got a reply.

_ ::Why does no one care about my problems anymore unless they involve Skywarp???? I have a life, you know!!!:: _

Thundercracker rolled his eyes and kept writing.

_ ::I lost my temper in front of Skywarp this morning and now he won't come out of his room,:: _ dropped into his inbox a moment later.

Ah. So it was about Skywarp after all. He'd figured. Starscream didn't usually bother talking to him about any of his other problems.

_ :What do you mean you lost your temper?: _ he queried.

_ ::We can talk about that later! Come help me with Warp!:: _

Thundercracker groaned and set his pen down.

_ :You have the door code. Just open it.: _

_ ::No! He'll hate me even more if I do that! Come talk to him. He likes you.:: _

_ :I can't just leave work. And what about your job?: _

_ ::I took a personal day.:: _

Thundercracker's eyebrows went up. That was at least the third personal day Starscream had taken this month from what he could tell. He was beginning to suspect his brother didn’t actually know what personal days were, but that was an issue for another time.

_ :Okay, well, just leave him alone and he'll come out when he's hungry.: _

_ ::What if he doesn't? I refused to eat for three whole days once when I was his age!:: _

Ah, yes. Starscream's infamous hunger strike. Thundercracker highly doubted Skywarp had anything like their older brother’s strength of will, but that wouldn’t stop Starscream from literally worrying himself sick over it. He let out a long breath and slumped back in his chair to frown at the ceiling.

“That bad, Lieutenant?”

Thundercracker sat up again to find his captain standing in his office doorway, another stack of expense reports in his hands.

“Ah, no, sir,” Thundercracker assured him, straightening up. 

The older mech hummed and stepped over to drop the reports on his lieutenant's desk. “You don't have to hide it, T.C. We all know paperwork sucks,” he said.

“Well... yes,” Thundercracker agreed, and then, because he'd known Captain Windscar his entire life and couldn't resist the urge to unload problems on him, he added, “But also my brother's neurotic.”

His captain made a face of dawning comprehension and nodded sympathetically.

“That’s… kind of something I wanted to talk to you about,” the older mech confessed. “I thought I should let you know: I just got word our unit's getting deployed soon. Off-planet. Maybe a couple years.”

Thundercracker felt as if something cold had dropped into his stomach. He couldn't go off-planet for a couple years right now! Unlike Starscream, he only had  _ one _ little brother, and he didn’t intend to miss a huge chunk of his sparkling years. Not to mention, he had a  _ girlfriend! _

“Anyway,” Windscar was continuing. “I know your family’s had a lot going on with… the accident, and your little brother, and then Starscream… Well, I was close enough to your folks to know Starscream isn’t… He doesn’t handle stress very well, would be a way of putting it delicately, I suppose. So, with him showing up in the tabloids lately and all, I’ve been wondering if he’s been struggling again”

“He’s…” Thundercracker was about to protest that Starscream handled stress as well as anyone else these days, but then he thought of the conversation they’d just been having and the way Starscream had been acting in general since their parents’ death. And it was a small one, but he  _ had  _ had a panic attack a few months ago when he started his cycles. If he’d had one, he could’ve been having others that no one knew about yet. “He hasn’t been coping with the loss very well, sir,” the Seeker finally confessed.

“I don’t see how anyone could blame him. Poor kid couldn’t even make it to the funeral. Now the anniversary’s coming up in a couple months, and that can be a difficult time for anyone…” Windscar trailed off significantly.

“You don’t think I should leave him alone with Skywarp, do you, sir?” Thundercracker guessed.

“You’d know better than me, kiddo,” his captain shrugged. “I’d think about it good and hard if I was you, though. This deployment could be a big career boost, and it’s not like you’re the only person who can take care of your brothers. But if you put in a transfer request in the next couple days, I’d make sure it went through. I owe your old man that much at least.”

A transfer! Thundercracker latched onto the idea with a thrill of relief. He had plenty of time to build his career—he was already ahead for his age, after all—but his personal life wouldn’t wait.

“Where would I go, sir?” he wondered.

Windscar scratched his chin thoughtfully for a moment. “There’s another lieutenant by the name of Acidwire I wouldn’t mind taking in your place. Heard he’s looking for a deployment right now, too.” 

Thundercracker’s hopes sank abruptly. He knew Acidwire and liked him just fine, but Acidwire worked under Captain Cloudwake, and Cloudwake was... terrible. Not a terrible captain, just a terrible mech. The kind of mech Thundercracker wouldn’t leave alone with his cousin. Or either of his brothers, for that matter.

“Thank you, sir. I'll think about it,” the lieutenant muttered after a while.

“Hey, Cloudwake's not as bad as Maelstrom probably made him out to be,” Windscar told him, guessing at his hesitation. “Yeah, some nasty stuff went down in Kaon after we lost the colonies, but... That was a bad time for a lot of folks. Shouldn't judge anyone on what they did during those first few millennia.”

Well, Thundercracker's parents had always said you could really tell the measure of a person by how they responded to the Golden Age crash, but who was he to contradict a superior officer?

“No, it's leaving your unit that I'll need to think about, sir, not joining Cloudwake's,” he assured his captain with a half-smile.

“Charmer,” the older mech chuckled as he headed back toward the door. “Let me know by the end of the week.”

Thundercracker waited until his footsteps had faded down the hall before opening his comms again to read through the multiple messages Starscream had sent in the last few minutes.

_ ::Don't ignore me!:: _

_ ::T.C., please!:: _

_ ::Please, I'm upset.:: _

_ ::I found out something very upsetting this morning and now this thing with Skywarp! I'm depressed.:: _

_ ::I don’t feel good.:: _

_ ::I don’t know what to do.:: _

_ ::I just threw up. Please come over.:: _

Thundercracker groaned and let his head fall forward onto the desk. Why couldn’t his parents have waited just another million years to die?

 

* * *

 

“So, you never made a move on anyone else?”

“No,” Megatron repeated, trying to massage away his headache.

“And there’s no chance he found out about something you did back when you were young and stupid?” Outburst wondered as he worked to get a better grip on the massive sliver of metal sticking out of the gladiator’s thigh.

“He said it was—ow!—something I did in front of his brother, so I wouldn’t think so,” Megatron explained, wincing as the splinter finally pulled free. He quickly pressed a wad of gauze against the inch-wide hole it had left in his leg.

“Well, you have said he’s rather sensitive,” the medic reminded him, frowning at the energon-covered length of metal. “It’s possible that—no. You know, I still don’t understand how you managed to get a foot-long splinter in your thigh while you were  _ sweeping _ . What the frag were you sweeping!?”

Megatron rolled his eyes. He could have pulled the splinter out himself, but had decided it was as good an excuse as any to come talk to Outburst about Starscream’s bizarre call. Now he was wishing he’d waited.

“ _ Rubble _ ,” the gladiator repeated. “We’re cleaning up the coliseum ourselves until Switchback can find some cheap contractors.”

“And were you sweeping the rubble, or throwing it at each other?” the other mech wanted to know.

“I tripped and fell on it, okay?” Megatron snapped. “I’ve been a little distracted.”

He’d been more than a little distracted. The gladiator had spent the entire day going over every single moment of the previous evening time and time again, trying to find  _ something _ that could have offended Starscream so badly. Nothing was sticking out, and he’d been starting to think back farther when Ravage had decided to wander right up under his feet, like Megatron had told him at least a  _ million _ times not to. Either the cat was  _ not _ as sentient as Soundwave claimed he was, or he bore Megatron some inexplicable ill will.

“Hm, well,” Outburst grunted, reaching for a bottle of cleanser. “I was going to say that, from what you’ve told me, he sounds like he’s a good deal more than just ‘a bit sensitive,’ so whatever’s going on probably isn’t the least bit logical.”

“Oh, doubtless,” Megatron agreed, lifting the gauze so that Outburst could douse his leg in cleansing solution. “I’m pretty certain he’s hiding an anxiety disorder, and wouldn’t be surprised if he’s got some kind of diagnosable personality disorder, too. I’ve been meaning to reread my psychology texts and see if anything fits.”

“Maybe review the section on masochism while you’re at it,” the medic snorted. “Why the frag are you trying to date a hot mess like that?”

“Because I  _ like _ him,” the gladiator insisted.

“You like him?” Outburst challenged, one eyebrow going up as he slapped a bandage down over Megatron’s thigh. “Or you like the idea of screwing him?”

Megatron just glared at him.

“Fine, fine. You  _ like _ him,” the medic finally conceded, tossing the gladiator’s energon-stained pants at him. “Then I suggest you get your aft up to Vos and ask him what’s going on in person. Don’t bring a present, though. That makes it look like you think you’ve got something to apologize for.”

“I can’t just  _ go to Vos _ ,” Megatron argued as he started to tug his pants back on. “There’s too much going on here.”

“And you’re the one who decided to start a long-distance relationship with a psychotic aristocrat on top of it all,” Outburst scoffed. “Next transport leaves in 30 minutes. Either go catch it or use this as an opportunity to break up with him, but stop whining at me about it.”

“He’s not psychotic,” the gladiator muttered as he got to his feet. “He’s just…  _ sensitive. _ ”


	3. In Which Starscream Puts More Than His Foot In His Mouth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I debated cutting this chapter in half, but it kind of killed the tension/pacing. So, here, have a super long chapter!

When Thundercracker finally made it over to his parents' house, he found Starscream sprawled out on the floor in front of their youngest brother's bedroom, snoring slightly with his face pressed against the pages of a book. He snorted and jerked into consciousness when Thundercracker nudged him with a foot.

“Where've you  _ been!? _ ” the older Seeker demanded, wiping drool from his chin as he sat up.

“I told you I couldn't come until I got off work,” his brother reminded him. “You know, Skywarp probably would've come out hours ago if you hadn't parked yourself right in front of his door.”

“Oh, because  _ you _ know so much about sparklings!” Starscream snapped.

“Maybe not, but I know more about Skywarp than you do. That's the whole reason you called me,” Thundercracker reminded him.

Starscream glared at him for a moment and then hauled himself to his feet, tucking the book he'd been sleeping on beneath his arm. It was that little green book of poems he'd been so obsessed with lately, Thundercracker noted.

“Well, go on then, and see what you can do,” he sniffed, gesturing to Skywarp's door.

Thundercracker rolled his eyes and stepped up to it, rapping out a particular pattern on the panel. He glanced over to see that Starscream's mouth had dropped open in offense.

“That's  _ our _ secret knock!” his brother hissed, and Thundercracker shrugged as the door clicked open.

Two small, fluffy, pink shapes came darting out of the opening and started yapping around Starscream's lower legs before a tiny hand shot out to seize Thundercracker's hand and tug him into the room. As soon as his brother was through the door, Skywarp slammed it shut again.

“Whatcha doin' in here, bud?” Thundercracker asked as his eyes adjusted to the relative gloom of the bedroom. Skywarp had most of the lights out and all of the shades pulled down.

“Shh!” the sparkling hissed at him, still tugging his brother toward the far corner of the room where he'd built some kind of fort, using far more blankets and pillows that it seemed possible his bed could have held. “We have to hide!”

Thundercracker followed his brother underneath the cover of the fort and settled into the pillows piled there.

“What are we hiding from?” he asked, picking a blue and gold quilt out of the pile. It was one of his mother's favorites.

“The Quintessons!” Skywarp told him, snatching the quilt away and throwing it around his own shoulders. “They're waiting to attack us.”

“Oh, I see,” Thundercracker remarked with exaggerated enthusiasm. “I don't suppose any of these Quintessons happen to be called Starscream, do they?”

His brother clicked on a flashlight and made a face at him. “He won't go away.”

“Well, I think he's worried because you've been in here all day, and there's nothing to eat in here,” Thundercracker shrugged.

“I have snacks,” Skywarp informed him, dragging a mostly-eaten bag of magnesium crisps and a packet of zinc chews from beneath a pillow. He'd grabbed the crisps by the bottom of the bag, though, and the silvery flakes spilled out into his lap. The sparkling stared down at them in apparent confusion for a moment before starting to studiously transfer them back into the bag.

“Skywarp?” Thundercracker prompted him. “Starscream wanted me to come in here to tell you he's really sorry, and he wishes you would talk to him.”

“I don't wanna,” the sparkling insisted, not looking up from his project with the crisps.

“How come?” his older brother wanted to know.

Skywarp didn't answer.

“Okay, well, you can't stay in here forever, so what are you gonna do?” Thundercracker pressed.

“Is Star mad at me?” Skywarp asked after a pause.

“No, I don't think he's mad at you,” the older Seeker promised. “He just gets real upset sometimes. It's not your fault.”

Skywarp dumped the last of the large bits of crisp back into the bag and finally looked up at his brother. “Is he upset because Megatron touched his wings?” he wanted to know.

Thundercracker furrowed his brow. “Um... Why do you think that?”

Skywarp took a deep breath. “Star told me I’m not allowed to touch his wings, and it's not fair because you're allowed, and he said you're allowed because you do massage, but then I said Megatron touches them too, and he asked when I saw that, and I said it was last night when Star was asleep on the couch and Megatron was helping me with my reading, and then he started screaming.”

“O...oh,” Thundercracker blinked, thinking how Starscream had said he'd heard something upsetting that morning.

If it had been anyone else, he would have set this aside as far too trivial to have set this whole thing off, but this was Starscream. He’d once had a massive panic attack because the maid had bought him the wrong shampoo. Finding out that his boyfriend had been groping him in his sleep was exactly the sort of thing he would work himself up to the point of vomiting over.

“Yeah, I think he's probably upset about that,” Thundercracker finally concluded, and Skywarp's face fell. “But it's not your fault, Warpy Warp. He's mad at Megatron, not you.”

“Is Megatron not gonna come over anymore, then?” the sparkling wanted to know.

“Well... probably not,” his brother guessed. “You liked him, didn't you?”

Skywarp nodded and started fidgeting with the edge of their mother's quilt.

“T.C.?” he squeaked after a moment, keeping his gaze fixed on his hands.

“What?”

“If it wasn't true, would Star stop being mad at Megatron?”

And now Thundercracker's eyebrows went up.

“ _ Is _ it true, Skywarp?” he asked.

The sparkling turned away and started rolling up the bag of crisps. “I should put the snacks away,” he mumbled.

“Skywarp?” his brother pressed.

“Just because I was supposed to be in bed!” Skywarp protested. “I saw them in the kitchen before, but I was supposed to be in bed, so Star will be mad at me when he finds out! But I don't want Megatron to stop coming over...”

“...You saw them in the kitchen? When they thought you were in bed?” Thundercracker verified, suddenly hoping very much that Starscream had been telling the truth about him and Megatron not having gone any farther than second base.

Skywarp nodded. “Are you gonna tell Star?” he wanted to know.

“Well, if I don't, he's not gonna let Megatron come back.”

“But he'll be mad at me because I lied and I wasn't in bed like I was supposed to be!” his brother wailed.

“True, but he also scared you, so how about you both say sorry to each other and we can call it even?” Thundercracker suggested, sending a ping for Starscream to come in.

Skywarp groaned and flopped over backward into the pile of cushions. “That’s not how it works, T.C.,” he sighed. “Grown ups don’t say sorry to sparklings.”

The door clicked open.

“Skywarp?” Starscream’s voice called out tentatively.

The sparkling sat up abruptly and shot Thundercracker a wide-mouthed look of betrayal before the older Seeker peeked out of the makeshift tent to wave their third brother over.

“It’s not my fault!” Skywarp protested the second Starscream’s head poked in beneath the cover.

“What’s not your fault?” his brother wanted to know. “And where did you get so many pillows?”

“No one was using them,” the sparkling mumbled, pulling his blanket more tightly round himself.

“Skywarp has something important to tell you,” Thundercracker cut in before Starscream could get worked up about something as pointless as pillows. He took his brother’s upper arm and tugged him down to settle into the pillow fort with them. “But before that, is there anything you want to say to him?”

Starscream glared at him, and a moment or two of silent communication passed between the two of them before the older brother rolled his eyes and turned to Skywarp.

“Like I said before,” he grumbled, “I’m sorry for startling you. I wasn’t angry at you to begin with.”

“See, Warp?” Thundercracker grinned. “Now, why don’t you tell Star what you told me, and Starscream, when you hear this, I suggest you remember that you already owe Warp one for scaring him this morning.”

Starscream’s eyebrow went up as Skywarp shifted awkwardly and then pulled his blanket up over his head.

“Warp?” Starscream prompted.

Beneath the blanket, the sparkling shook his head firmly.

“Either you tell him or I will,” Thundercracker warned.

Another shake.

“Oh, for Primus’s sake! What is it?” Starscream demanded.

Thundercracker heaved a sigh. He couldn’t deal with this melodrama anymore.

“Skywarp was afraid he’d get punished for being out of bed past his bedtime, so he lied about when he saw Megatron touching your wings,” he explained. “He actually walked by the kitchen while the two of you were making out a few days ago.”

Starscream froze, both physically and mentally for several moments, and then, much to Thundercracker’s surprise, he seemed to deflate.

“Well, it was bound to happen at some point,” he sighed. “Warp, if I catch you out of bed past your bedtime again, I’ll start locking your door from the outside.”

The sparkling reappeared from beneath his blanket, expression indignant.

“You can’t—!!” he started.

“I can and I will,” Starscream cut him off. “Or should I just go ahead and ground you for doing it in the first place, plus lying about it?”

Skywarp’s mouth quickly snapped shut, but he continued to scowl.

“There. All better,” Thundercracker declared, and then, because he knew his brother, “Now, you might want to apologize to Megatron for whatever nonsensical things you accused him of.”

Starscream picked at the embroidery on a nearby throw pillow. “No, it’s probably better this way.”

“Better what way?” Thundercracker asked, narrowing his eyes.

“I ended things with him,” his older brother explained, not making eye contact. “Called him this morning and told him it was over. It’s for the best. We weren’t really compatible, anyway.”

Skywarp’s expression fell. “Does that mean Megatron’s not coming over anymore after all?” he wanted to know.

Thundercracker had other concerns, though.

“What do you mean you weren’t compatible!?” he demanded. “From what I’ve seen and heard, if the two of you were any more compatible, you’d end up magnetized to each other!”

“We just want different things,” Starscream shrugged. “And yes, Warp, that means he’s not coming over anymore.”

The sparkling looked deeply disappointed.

“What kinds of different things?” Thundercracker wanted to know.

“Just  _ things _ , Thundercracker. I don’t want to talk about it,” his brother muttered.

“But I  _ liked _ Megatron!” Skywarp whined. “I wanna play with him again!”

“I thought  _ you _ liked Megatron, too,” Thundercracker pressed, leaning back slightly so he could see his older brother’s face better.

“Sure, but that doesn’t mean I wanna be stuck with him,” Starscream scoffed. “He’s started pressing me for a  _ commitment _ . Honestly…”

Thundercracker stared.

“By the All-spark, Star! It’s dating, not a sparkbond!” he despaired.

“It still has obligations and things!” his brother protested, rounding on him. “What if he starts expecting me to be available all the time or… or…”

“Oh, wow. Someone expecting you to be available 24/7 for random emotional support—I can’t imagine what that could be like,” Thundercracker mocked.

“Exactly! I already have two brothers who depend on me! I don’t need a boyfriend, too!” Starscream snapped.

“Did you stop to consider that if you had a boyfriend, there’d be another person who  _ you _ could depend on?” Thundercracker returned.

“I’m not gonna put that kind of burden on him!”

“Star, that’s what relationships  _ are! _ And Megatron seems like the type who could handle it. He’s technically old enough to be your father, after all.”

“Okay, well, he  _ can’t  _ handle it!” Starscream hissed. “I know because I called him this morning and I was a terror and told him it was over, and he hasn’t even  _ tried _ to call or message me back! So, obviously, he’s decided I’m too difficult to be worth the effort anymore!”

There was silence after that, broken only by the sounds of Starscream sniffling and trying to swallow back tears, and then Skywarp, who had been silently watching his brothers’ argument like a spectator at a lob ball match, shuffled forward and awkwardly patted his brother on the knee.

“Don’t be sad, Star,” he said. “You can just tell Megatron sorry like you told me.”

Starscream gave a bitter laugh and ran a hand through the sparkling’s hair. “Sorry doesn’t always fix things, Warp,” he told him.

_ No, but it’s a good start that you rarely even bother taking, _ Thundercracker was about to say when suddenly a ping came through on his notifications system. Starscream heaved an exasperated sigh just as Thundercracker recognized it as a signal that there was someone at the door. He’d forgotten his system still synced to the house while he was in it.

“That’s probably the energon delivery for the week,” Starscream grumbled, starting to get to his feet.

“I’ll get it,” Thundercracker said quickly, pushing the other mech back down. He didn’t trust his brother to behave in his current state, and they didn’t need any more rumors about the quality of Starscream’s sanity going around town. He sent an answering ping down to the front door to let whoever it was know that someone was on their way and headed out of the dimly lit room. 

The last thing he heard before the door shut behind him was Starscream asking Skywarp, “So, what’s the pillow fort for?”

 

* * *

 

Megatron had followed Outburst’s advice and not brought any sort of apology gift with him to Vos, though he had composed no less than six possible apology poems on the ride over, just in case. Now, as he shuffled awkwardly on the Seeker’s back step, he was starting to wish he’d gotten  _ something _ . It could have been something small—something he could have pulled out after they’d smoothed things over to impress him with, like jewelry. Not that Starscream was liable to actually wear any jewelry that Megatron could afford to buy him…

The door finally clicked open, and the gladiator hastily straightened up, wincing when a little too much weight fell on his injured leg.

“Star…” he began, and hastily trailed off as he realized the figure standing in the doorway was far too large to be Starscream. “Thundercracker,” he course corrected, his hopes falling slightly. He hadn’t anticipated having to get through an extra layer of opposition before he could do battle with Starscream’s stubbornness and, yes, delusions. “Is your brother in?”

The Seeker’s dark blue eyebrows rose higher, and he gave the other mech a thoughtful once-over.

“He said he called and told you it was over this morning,” Thundercracker said, more a statement of fact than a challenge.

“Yes, well… I believe there may have been some kind of misunderstanding and felt it best to come speak to him in person,” Megatron explained.

The Seeker rubbed at a bit of stubble on his chin and hummed critically.

“I’m not planning to give up on him anytime soon,” the gladiator pressed.

“Alright, here’s the deal,” Thundercracker said at last. “Starscream likes you—a lot—but he’s too insecure to make the effort to keep you. There was a misunderstanding, and he’s probably going to try and run with that, or something equally stupid, so that he has an excuse to let things naturally fall apart right now. Please, for the love of Primus,  _ do not let him! _ I know you like arguing with him, but when he gets like this, you have to just refuse to rise to his bait until he breaks. Can you do that?”

Megatron blinked. “Shouldn’t be too much of a problem,” he finally grunted.

“Great,” Thundercracker beamed, stepping aside to let him in. “Also, you have my full permission to have as much sex with him as you like.”

Well, Megatron didn’t think he really needed anyone but Starscream’s permission for that, but he supposed it was at least nice to know he wouldn’t have any angry siblings bursting in on him if he things ever happened to go that way. And perhaps they would if he could wind Starscream out of whatever panic attack he’d been having, because the gladiator now realized that Thundercracker was leading him up toward the bedrooms.

“Shouldn’t we knock?” Megatron wondered as the Seeker entered the code to Starscream’s room.

“Just trust me,” the young mech assured him.

The door slid back, revealing Starscream’s bedroom, which Thundercracker ushered Megatron into. It didn’t take much examination to realize that Starscream was not in the room at the moment.

“Trust me,” Thundercracker repeated when Megatron opened his mouth in question. “Wait here.”

And then he closed the door. Megatron frowned but had no reason not to trust the Seeker. So, he took a moment to examine Starscream’s bedroom.

It was just about everything he’d expected. He smiled at the carefully catalogued rock collection that covered most of one wall, and trailed a finger over the spines of countless books and datapads with names like:  _ Geology Vs. Metallurgy: When Is an Ore a Rock? _ ,  _ The Cosmic Function of Organic Life _ ,  _ Cosmology Beyond Primus _ , and  _ A Photographic Encyclopedia of Nebulas _ . Megatron’s finger paused over that last one because the author was listed as ‘Starscream of Vos.’ 

Well, Starscream had mentioned that he’d published books on his research, but Megatron had assumed they would all be things like, “Why the Rest of You Fools Are Wrong About Everything, Volume XXV.” A book full of beautiful photos of nebulas was the last thing he’d expected. But then he caught sight of  _ Disproving Sigil’s Theory of Organic Evolution, Vol I _ on the next shelf down, also attributed to Starscream, and balance was restored.

Megatron was just considering pulling down the encyclopedia and cracking it open when he heard the door open once more, followed by Starscream’s voice.

“—nothing stopping you from getting one of your own already, T.C. They’re not expensive,” the Seeker was saying when he caught sight of the gladiator standing in the middle of his room and he froze. The second their eyes met, all doubt Megatron had about coming here evaporated.

“Starscream,” he greeted with a slight nod.

His almost-boyfriend blanched and spun around as if to run back out the door, but Thundercracker had already slammed it shut behind him. The Seeker made a frantic whining noise and stayed pressed against the door with his back to Megatron for a long while.

“So,” the gladiator spoke up when it became clear Starscream wasn’t going to turn around on his own. “Your brother tells me there was some kind of misunderstanding?”

Starscream hugged himself tighter. The gladiator heaved a sigh, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck.

“I like you, Starscream. I really do,” he said, and the other mech stiffened. “You're smart, ambitious, driven, and sexier than I can stand sometimes. I don't mind if you have a harder time communicating than some other mechs, but I need you to at least  _ try _ to act like an adult.”

Starscream finally whipped around.

“What gives you the right to make judgments about me or my behavior?” he snarled. “You barely know me!”

“Maybe,” Megatron shrugged, undaunted. “But I'd like to. I'd really, really like to. I'd like to know what it takes for you to feel comfortable letting your walls down to me.”

Starscream clenched his jaw, and shrank back from the gladiator the tiniest bit.

“I don’t…” he started. “I’m not… I’m not a nice person.”

“I never assumed you were,” Megatron assured him, starting to move forward.

Starscream bit his lip, but didn’t retreat.

“I have a temper. I’ll get mad at you, a lot,” he continued.

“I’m a gladiator, Starscream. I can take it.”

“I’m clingy, and needy, and super high maintenance,” was the Seeker’s next challenge.

“You’re worth it.”

Megatron had reached him now, and Starscream was staring up at him like a trapped animal.

“I’ll always want everything my way,” he tried.

“And sometimes I’ll let you have it,” Megatron smirked, reaching for him.

 

* * *

 

It took more self-control than Starscream had known he possessed to shove down the five million fears and anxieties screaming that this was too risky, that he couldn’t go down this road, that he was going to get hurt, and let himself just melt into Megatron’s kiss. Who cared about what happened in the future? Right now, he wanted this—wanted this amazing, powerful mech to hold him, to touch him, to tell him again how he was worth it.

Pinned between Megatron’s massive wall of muscle and the bedroom door, Starscream didn’t even think to question his body’s reflexes as he started climbing up the other mech, reaching his arms around his neck and hooking a leg up around his hip. Large hands moved down to squeeze his backside before sliding under his thighs and heaving him up. Starscream clung on desperately as Megatron stumbled backward with his weight, turning and…

Reason rushed back to Starscream as his back hit mattress with 250 lbs of gladiator on top of him.

“Wait!” he gasped, squirming frantically. “Wait, wait, wait!”

“What?” Megatron asked, raising up on his elbows to look down at him.

“I…” And Starscream wracked his brain in desperation for some kind of excuse that would make sense and wouldn’t alienate his new boyfriend because  _ he wasn’t ready for this _ . Not so suddenly. Not like this. He wanted his first time to be something more significant than this. “I’m cycling!” he finally blurted.

The gladiator blinked at him.

“I don’t mind,” he said, running a hand down Starscream’s thigh and pressing a kiss to his chest. “Just makes things a bit more slippery is all.”

“Well, I  _ do _ mind!” Starscream insisted, pushing at him again, trying to get the stupid mech out from between his legs. Megatron sat up, not quite hiding his disappointment.

“Alright,” he sighed, moving a little ways away. “We’ll have plenty of other opportunities.”

But somehow, Starscream felt dissatisfied leaving it at that. As he pushed himself up into a sitting position too, his body and spark were both screaming at him to keep going; it was just his whirling mind that kept saying, “Don’t be stupid! You haven’t even shaved down there in almost a week. Anyway, you can’t very well tell him you were lying about the cycle now.”

Yet he didn’t want this moment to pass without  _ something  _ more happening than what they’d done together so far.

“But… that doesn’t mean I can’t do anything for you,” he found himself saying before he’d even had a chance to think it through.

And, for a second, Megatron lit up like Iacon’s main street on Primesday. Then, he seemed to remember that he was supposed to be a gentlemech and reigned himself in.

“No, I don’t want to just take from you,” he said.

“You’re not taking from me; I’m giving to you,” Starscream scoffed, even as something inside him started screaming, ‘ _ YOU IDIOT!!! _ ’ “Think of it as an apology for this morning.”

What was he doing? What the frag was he doing!? He’d given a grand total of one hand job in his entire life, and he was fairly certain Megatron was expecting at least a blow job! Primus, he hoped Megatron was expecting a blow job and not to get eaten out. Valves were so much more complicated than spikes!

“Are you sure?” Megatron asked, and Starscream found his gaze drawn down to the suspect bulge in the other mech’s pants. How did other people get their spikes out so fast? His always took quite a bit of coaxing.

Starscream scooted himself forward, doing his best to look seductive even as his spark was beating so hard it felt like it was going to choke him.

“I want to do this for you,” he purred.

“Okay,” Megatron agreed, his face splitting into a smirk once more. “Do you wanna do it up here, or should I sit on the edge so you can be on the floor?”

“The floor is good,” Starscream told him, reasoning that he’d be in a better position to retreat suddenly if need be on the floor.

The gladiator grinned and pressed a quick kiss to his lips before starting to shunt the Seeker along toward the edge of the bed with him. Starscream scrambled off, quickly searching his databases for every porno he’d ever watched that involved spike sucking. He could do this. It couldn’t be that hard. All he needed to do was make sure he didn’t choke himself or bite Megatron.

He positioned himself on the floor in front of the other mech and looked up impatiently, clenching his fists to hide a tremble as it suddenly hit him that he was about to see Megatron’s spike. Holy Primus, he was about to see it! For real!

Megatron smirked down at him obnoxiously and undid his belt. Starscream maintained stubborn eye contact until he heard the zip and a rustle of cloth being moved aside, and then…

“I’ve seen bigger,” Starscream automatically lied. It had been a while, but he didn’t think even Skyfire’s spike had been that massive.

“I’m sure you have,” the gladiator chuckled, stroking himself out to full size languidly.

“Don't be afraid to stop if it gets to be too much.”

The Seeker tried his best to scoff at the implication that Megatron could ever be too much for him, but it was difficult when his valve was already actively throbbing at the thought of that thing ever getting stuffed inside it.

He scooted forward a bit so that he was face to tip with the gladiator's pressurized spike. The appendage twitched up and down, and Starscream looked up to see Megatron grinning saucily down at him as he leaned his weight back onto his hands.

“Stop that,” Starscream snapped, “or I won't do it.”

“Okay, okay,” the older mech relented. “Just trying to help calm you down a bit.”

“I am perfectly calm,” the Seeker lied, reaching out to take his partner's spike in hand. It was surprisingly warm and felt even bigger in his hand than it had looked. “Now hold still.”

Whenever Starscream had seen this in porn, it had seemed whoever was performing the act almost always debased themselves shamelessly in the process. While he was perfectly happy to pleasure his boyfriend, he had no intentions of letting Megatron overload messily all over his face or chest... or inside his mouth. He supposed he could always just take him to the edge and then fist him to completion, but he would have to get up the courage to actually put his mouth on the other mech's spike first.

The Seeker swallowed and leaned in, pressing his lips tentatively to the very tip. He let his tongue poke out curiously and swipe at the hot flesh. To his immense relief, it didn't taste like anything other than skin—perhaps a little bit saltier than usual. He allowed his mouth to open and slid down farther, trying not to think too hard about what he was actually doing.

Megatron made a pleasant humming noise, and Starscream glanced up at him as he hit the farthest he could take the gladiator without choking. There was a lot of spike left.

“You're cute,” his boyfriend informed him. The Seeker felt color rising into his cheeks and quickly looked away before pulling back up to the tip.

At first, he was absorbed mainly with the novelty and mild surprise that he was, in fact, sucking another mech’s spike. He had not thought this was where his day would be going when he’d woken up that morning. After a while, though, he tried to think as he bobbed up and down about what kinds of sensations he liked on his own spike and where, but found himself lacking in ideas for obvious reasons. This was good, though, wasn't it? This was... sex-like.

A large hand curled in his hair, and Starscream stiffened with a little gasp, seriously hoping that Megatron was not about to start thrusting into him.

“Sorry,” the gladiator grunted, quickly releasing him. “I was just... never mind.”

Starscream slid off his spike to look up at him. “What?” he wanted to know.

“You have done this before, yes?” Megatron asked.

Starscream flushed even deeper red. “Of course I have!” he snapped. “It… might have been a while, though.”

“Ah, well... It's just better if you use your tongue or kind of suck on it a bit is all,” Megatron told him, stroking the Seeker's bangs back from his forehead.

Starscream blanched and quickly latched back onto the gladiator's spike with renewed vigor to hide his embarrassment. Suck on it? Wasn't that what he was doing already? Curiously, he tried slurping a little on the other mech's shaft as he pulled up. The motion pulled his lips back from his teeth just the slightest, and Megatron's legs jerked violently on either side of him.

“Okay, okay! I didn't think it was  _ that  _ bad a criticism!” Megatron yelped, grabbing hold of the younger mech's head to stop him from moving for a second. Starscream struggled a bit until Megatron's hand moved and he was able to pull himself off again with a wet little pop.

“What do you mean 'suck,' then!?” he demanded.

“Like...” Megatron seemed to be searching for the right words, and then gave up with a frustrated sigh. “Here, just let me—”

“No!” Starscream snapped, pushing against the gladiator as he started moving down onto the floor with him. “ _ I'm _ supposed to be getting  _ you _ off!”

“Okay, well, let me teach you how first,” Megatron argued, his hands moving down to the Seeker's waistband.

“I can... I already know how!” Starscream protested, swatting at him.

“Do you, though?” Megatron asked, an eyebrow arching.

“Why are you always so fragging smug about everything!?” the Seeker demanded. “Get back up on that bed and I'll bite it off for y—”

He was cut off when the gladiator seized the back of his neck and pulled him into a fervent kiss. Starscream made a noise of protest and hit him on the shoulder, but Megatron just slid a hand around to his lower back as he started tilting the Seeker down to the floor. After a moment, Starscream gave in and kissed him back, letting the larger mech lie out on top of him. He was the one supposed to be pleasuring Megatron right now, but his brain seemed to forget that temporarily as the gladiator's weight pinned him to the floor.

“I'm not done with you,” Starscream grumbled when Megatron finally released his mouth to kiss down along his jaw and neck.

“I never thought you were,” his boyfriend whispered back, breath hot across his collarbones.

Starscream's spark was hammering too hard in his chest, and he shifted his legs as he felt the heat between them starting to escalate. His valve was throbbing for attention, and Megatron's spike was hot and thick on his stomach. Would it be such a bad thing to let it go all the way right now?

The gladiator grabbed his wrists, pinning one of his hands up over his head and bringing the other one to his mouth. He looked Starscream in the eye as he pressed his lips to slender fingers.

“Watch,” he murmured, and then he took Starscream's first two fingers and popped them into his mouth.

“Wha... Stop that!” Starscream snapped, trying to pull his hand away. “That's disgusting!”

Megatron obliged, grinning. “So, your fingers in my mouth is disgusting, but my spike in yours is fine? Your logic never fails to astound me, Star.”

“That's not...”

“Just watch, and then you can get back to what you were doing.” Megatron took the Seeker's fingers back into his mouth, and this time Starscream simply glared at him as he moved his lips up and down them. He was about to make a comment about how Megatron was doing literally the exact same thing he'd been doing this whole time when he felt the gladiator's tongue slide up his fingers, flicking over the tips and circling them a bit before Megatron sank back down them again. On the next pass, Starscream had to force himself to keep scowling instead of making a little “oh” of understanding—so  _ that _ was what his boyfriend had meant about sucking on it...

“Okay,” he said after another minute of this. “Okay, I get it already. You can stop.”

Megatron pulled back, smirking as he wiped the Seeker's fingers on his shirt and gave his jaw a few more nips.

“Let's get on with it, then,” the gladiator murmured. He pulled Starscream with him as he sat up.

“Are you sure you even still want this?” the Seeker asked.

“Oh, definitely,” Megatron assured him, settling himself back on the edge of the bed. He took his spike in hand and gave it a couple of pumps while Starscream got himself back in position. “Go for it. Just keep your teeth out of the way, please.”

Starscream made a face at him before smacking his hand away to replace it with his own. There was a drop of precum beading from Megatron's spike now, and the Seeker suppressed a shudder at the sticky consistency as he swiped his thumb across the tip to remove it.

This time, he started at the base, pressing his lips to the hot skin there before licking a swath up the length of the whole, obnoxiously large appendage. Megatron hummed appreciatively and reached down to stroke the younger mech's hair as Starscream took him in his mouth again. He stayed shallow for a while this time, looking up to see Megatron's reaction as he worked his tongue around the head.

“There you go,” his boyfriend told him, a slight flush creeping into his cheeks, and Starscream managed to smirk slightly around his spike before dipping down a bit. This time, he managed to keep his lips over his teeth as he sucked on the recoil. “So fragging gorgeous...” Megatron breathed, his hands sliding down over the Seeker's shoulders to press into the tops of his wings. The Seeker sighed in contentment around the gladiator's spike at the touch.

Starscream managed a few more victorious bobs of his head and swirls of his tongue before a drop of sticky,  _ bitter _ precum hit the back of his tongue. He gagged.

“Alright?” the gladiator checked.

Starscream nodded, his eyes screwed shut as he tried to convince himself that he didn't mind the taste or the texture at all. After a moment, he kept going, repressing little shudders every time he caught a flash of that horrible flavor again. He was going to have to get this over with quickly if he didn't want to vomit on his boyfriend.

He sped up, studying Megatron's face as he did to see which spots he should pay the most attention to. There was a small ridge on the underside of the tip that had the gladiator grunting each time he dragged his tongue across it, so Starscream started focusing there, licking and poking at it every time he came up to the top.

“That's so good Star,” Megatron panted, raking his fingers through the Seeker's hair. “Keep it up...”

He reached a hand down to wrap around the one Starscream had on the base of his spike, and started pumping the Seeker's grip up and down. Starscream got the hint and kept the motion up after Megatron released him to grip his shoulder again.

And then another thought occurred to him.

The Seeker brought his other hand up and swept a cautious finger across the node just at the base of the gladiator's spike.

Megatron gasped, his fingers digging almost painfully into Starscream's back, and the younger mech knew he'd struck sensory gold. He pressed into the node again, relishing the moan it dragged from the gladiator.

“Starscream, wait...!!” Megatron tried, grabbing hold of the Seeker's hands. Starscream missed the warning, though, and didn't quite get off his spike before it twitched and a gob of horridly brackish transfluid shot down his throat.

The Seeker pulled back, choking, only to get hit in the face with the next spurt.

“I was trying to warn you!” Megatron cried over his boyfriend's gagging, pulling his feet up in case of any impending messes. “I go too fast if you hit my node! Slag... I'm so sorry!”

Starscream was too busy shouting in disgust and trying to get transfluid out of his eye to pay attention.

“Fragging... Grab my head next time, not my hands!” he snarled, surging to his feet and running for the bathroom.

He fumbled around until he found the sink taps and stuck his face under the flow, taking in mouthful after mouthful of water to gargle and spit back into the sink. The taste was just starting to fade when he felt a hand on his back and jumped so badly he nearly smashed his face on the faucet.

“You did say you wanted to do it,” Megatron reminded him, stepping back a little.

“Yeah... I did,” Starscream conceded before dipping back down to splash water furiously over his face. “I didn't say I wanted to get blinded by your cum, though.”

“Sorry,” the gladiator repeated, and large arms slipped around the Seeker's middle. Megatron leaned down over him, resting his cheek on the smaller mech's shoulder as Starscream continued trying to wash transfluid out of his eye. “I enjoyed it, though.”

“I could tell,” Starscream snorted, and a warm mouth pressed to the back of his neck.

“I can’t wait to return the favor,” Megatron murmured.

Starscream turned back to kiss him rather than have to think of a definitive reply to that.

 


	4. In which responsibilities are shirked

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am more shocked than any of you that this is finally finished. Also, I'm gonna go ahead and just stick the two halves of this fic back together, so the next time I update, it'll be continuing on the good ole original "Failing and Flying." This whole "part II" business will be gone.

Megatron hesitated to use the word "satisfying" anywhere in close conjunction to a sexual encounter because, as a writer, he fancied himself more original than that, but he couldn't think what else he'd use to describe waking up the next morning with a gently snoring Starscream draped over his back. Not even the persistent dull throb from where his leg had been impaled by that “splinter” the previous day could ruin this.

The gladiator had been allowed to stay the night on the condition he made a solemn oath not to try anything while they were in bed—an oath which had been far more tempting to break than he would ever admit once he was actually lying beneath the covers with Starscream's perfect body pressed tightly against him, but he had somehow managed to keep his hands out of the Seeker's ridiculously soft pajamas.

_ ("What are these even made of? You feel like a shaved rabbit in them." _

_ "Praxian silk. You like them?" _

_ "I like what's  _ in _ them better.") _

He'd almost gotten himself kicked out of the bed for that one.

On his back, Starscream gave a little snort and turned his face away so Megatron couldn't see it anymore. Well, that wouldn't do.

With utmost care and gentle rearranging of slender limbs, Megatron rolled over so that Starscream was lying on top of his chest instead. The young mech made a couple of murmuring noises and opened his eyes a crack before settling into the new position with a sigh that wafted warm, moist air across Megatron's collarbones.

“Starscream?” he murmured, stroking the backs of his fingers over the Seeker’s cheek.

“Mm?”

“I like you a lot.”

“You’re a sap,” Starscream muttered in return, reaching up to grope blindly at his boyfriend’s face.

Megatron voiced his agreement to that sentiment and began smearing sloppy kisses across the young mech’s forehead and down the side of his face. Starscream made a delightful squealing noise and started squirming in his arms, so Megatron tightened his grip and rolled them over, trapping Starscream beneath him and closing his mouth over his warm, soft throat…

The body beneath him instantly went limp.

Megatron pulled back curiously to find his boyfriend staring blankly at the ceiling some 20 feet above them. When he called his name, Starscream blinked and brought his attention back to the matter at hand.

“What was that?” Megatron wanted to know.

“What was what?”

“You spaced out. People don’t usually do that while having their necks nibbled.”

Starscream just stared up at him, wickedly pretty and deceptively innocent.

“I told you I’m cycling. We can’t have sex,” he said after a moment.

Which was not the point right now.

“Right,” Megatron agreed carefully. He brought a hand up to stroke the soft hairs on Starscream’s left temple while he studied the Seeker’s sleepy face.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Starscream pouted, closing his eyes and turning away in self-defense.

Megatron shifted sideways so that his full weight wasn’t on the other mech anymore and then let himself relax in more or less the reverse of the position they’d been in a moment ago.

“Just out of curiosity,” he spoke after a moment or two of listening to Starscream breathe, “why  _ haven’t _ we had sex yet?”

“You’ve never asked,” came the quiet reply.

And though his face was still calm—almost asleep again—there was tension in the Seeker’s body. A familiar sort of tension that tended to arise anytime Megatron accidentally pushed too far, slid his hands too low, nestled himself too comfortably between Starscream’s legs. Perhaps he’d never asked outright, but he’d made countless nonverbal indications that he’d like to take things that way, and until last night, the Seeker’s body had always bid him halt.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Megatron murmured vaguely. He pressed a kiss to the corner of Starscream’s sharp jawline and draped an arm securely over his middle.

The last of the tension was just ebbing out of his boyfriend’s body when the bedroom door slowly creaked open. Megatron frowned at the sound of small feet padding toward them across the carpet, and turned back over his shoulder to find an uncharacteristically miserable-looking Skywarp hovering at the edge of the bed.

“What’s up?” Megatron grunted gently.

“Where’s… Where’s Star?” the sparkling wobbled back at him, twisting the heavy warp inhibitor on his wrist as a tear dribbled down one cheek.

“Right here,” Starscream sighed, sitting up so his brother could see him. “What’s wrong, Warp?”

“I…” Skywarp’s eyes flicked back to Megatron again for a split-second, and his voice was barely more than a thin whisper when he continued: “I peed my bed again.”

And Megatron could smell that now.

“Did you change your clothes?” he asked, warily eying the sparkling’s pajamas. The early morning light was still too dim to tell if they were wet or not. Skywarp just stared at him, trembling slightly.

“Go get in the tub, Warp. I’ll be right there,” Starscream told him with a yawn, and the sparkling nodded once before darting toward the bathroom.

When he’d gone, Megatron turned back to his boyfriend, now rubbing sleep from his eyes and making disgruntled noises.

“This happens a lot?” he guessed, sliding a hand up Starscream’s shirt to caress the lower curve of his left wing.

“At least once a week.” The other mech reached over to pat Megatron’s chest absently in response.

“Nightmares?”

“Yeah, and he’s great at sharing them.”

“What do you mean?”

“He has these recurring dreams,” Starscream explained wearily, “about going places with our parents and them disappearing, or being at home and the whole place suddenly explodes and… It’s like, if they were just my dreams, they wouldn’t be so bad, you know? But he gets so upset and he shoves it all at me, and I can’t always block it all.”

“You see his dreams?” Megatron asked carefully.

“Yeah, it’s… you know. Sibling bonds—that’s just how they work sometimes.”

Megatron pulled his hand out of Starscream’s shirt and twined his fingers through the Seeker’s instead as he considered this information.

In his experience, that was  _ not _ how sibling bonds worked. Not unless there was something wrong with one of the other of them that needed outside help. But Starscream so rarely shared his problems with his boyfriend to begin with that Megatron was hesitant to push too hard on the matter. In fact, he talked about them so rarely that it was easy at times to forget that it was still just under a year since Starscream had lost his parents, and Megatron supposed that he probably should have spared more thought for that over these last few months, especially considering how young he and his brothers all were..

Three million…

Megatron remembered that age: getting cycles for the first time, publishing his first book, feeling so grown up and independent, and then losing everything.

Of course, that was around the same time that the Plague had wiped out the colonies, and Megatron’s own grief had been lost in the lamentations of an empire. If someone had tried to tell him at the time that it was okay to cry for what he’d lost, he probably would have laughed. And possibly killed them for their presumptions if he hadn’t had enough to drink yet that day.

Starscream was already stronger than Megatron had been in so many ways, but that didn’t mean he was unbreakable.

Megatron sat up and leaned over to nuzzle into his boyfriend’s fragrant neck, taking care not to nibble this time. Starscream hummed lightly and turned to find his mouth. There was a wonderful, heady moment of skin and hair and mouths, and then Skywarp’s voice rang out from the bathroom.

“Star! The solvent is too hot!”

“When you’re done with him, can I give you a bath?” Megatron murmured into Starscream’s hair, tightening his grip as the Seeker started trying to get up.

“No, you weirdo!” Starscream whined. “Let me go, of you’re the one who gets to strip his bed down later!”

Megatron finally conceded and smiled to himself as he watched Starscream’s narrow back disappear into the bathroom.

After he’d gone, Megatron finally forced himself to turn to his comm, abandoned on the nightstand and powered off the previous evening so that he wouldn’t have to worry about it for just one night. There were no less than 63 messages waiting for him when the screen flashed to life: half from Switchback, some from Soundwave, some from Outburst, others from Tripwire even. The general theme was that he needed to get back to Kaon, ASAP.

With a heavy sigh, Megatron hoisted himself up out of his boyfriend’s wonderfully cushioned, sweet-smelling bed…

...and promptly toppled over onto the floor with a bellow of pain.

“What!? What happened!?” Starscream came darting from the bathroom with the sort of speed that only Seekers could manage to crouch by his side.

“Nothing,” Megatron assured him through gritted teeth as he rolled back over into a sitting position.

“Nothing my aft!” Starscream snapped, and though his voice was etched with annoyance, his eyes were wide with concern. “You’ve gone and gotten yourself hurt again, haven’t you? How!? You didn’t even have a match yesterday!”

“It’s just a scratch,” Megatron lied, hissing when he tried to move and the pain shot through his leg again. “Wouldn’t be bothering me at all if the painkillers hadn’t worn off.”

“ _ Show _ me!”

And then long, slender fingers were tugging at his waistband, and who was Megatron to object to  _ that? _ He helped Starscream slide his pants down over his hips and past his thighs to expose the bandage wrapped tightly round his his upper right thigh. The Seeker hissed and smacked at his hands impatiently when Megatron tried to help him get the bandage off.

“Did that hack who cleaned up my head that one time do this for you?” Starscream demanded when he’d finally laid bare the whole grisly affair.

“Why?” Megatron wanted to know.

All things considered, he thought it looked pretty good. A bit swollen, and he could see why the leg hadn’t born his weight, but he’d definitely had worse.

“Because this should have been stitched and the deep muscle layers welded!” Starscream snapped. “Not to mention you should have changed the bandage last night—Primus, Megatron! Are you  _ trying _ to get an infection!?”

“Starscream,” Megatron spoke carefully, “I’m a gladiator. I’ve been injured enough times by now that my self-repair can regenerate this kind of thing in a couple of days.”

“Then why are you still bleeding!?” his boyfriend demanded, jabbing an accusing finger at the fresh energon oozing up out of the injury.

Megatron shrugged. “Guess I was too busy regenerating other things last night.”

Starscream gave him a look far more deadly than any piddly rust infections that might be brewing in his leg, and then got to his feet.

“When Skywarp is done in the bath, I’ll get my triage kit,” he announced.

“If that’s what it takes to get you comfortable with my thighs,” Megatron said before he could stop himself.

At least, he reflected as the Seeker turned back toward the bathroom in disgust, Starscream had a vested interest in employing a steady hand while poking around so close to his more sensitive areas.

He hoped.

 

* * *

 

Starscream was well-accustomed to mechs who refused to admit when they were injured. His father used to do it all the time—limping around the house, wincing and groaning with every step, until Starscream yelled at him to just sit down and let someone take a look at it already. At least Megatron didn’t continue denying the existence of the gaping hole in his leg while Starscream was staring right at it.

Skywarp wanted to watch him patch it up, which was absolutely not going to happen.

“Go get ready for school,” Starscream ordered him instead, and the sparkling looked up at him in surprise.

“I have to go to school today?”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Starscream scoffed. “There aren’t any holes in  _ your _ legs.”

Skywarp’s face started to contort like he was about to throw himself into a tantrum.

“We’ll go out after I pick you up,” his brother promised hastily. “You can get a new toy or something tasty to eat.”

Which was thankfully enough to convince him for today.

Megatron’s leg didn’t take long to fix, and would have gone faster if the big lug hadn’t insisted on watching Starscream so intently, making his face burn almost as hot as the welding torch in his hand and his thoughts continuously threaten to run into one another.

“You’re good at this,” the gladiator told him at one point, apparently nonplussed by the process of having his deep muscle tissues fused back together.

“Why so surprised?” Starscream asked testily.

“I’ve never seen you treat your own injuries.”

“Poking around under my own skin makes me queasy,” the Seeker muttered, not sure why this required explanation. “Now shut up until I’m done.”

The gladiator acquiesced until after Starscream had proudly secured the final stitch in his thigh a few minutes later.

“Thank you,” he said, holding one side of his fresh bandage secure while Starscream wrapped the rest of it. “When are you taking Skywarp to school? I thought I’d go with you on my way to the station.”

Starscream’s head snapped up.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he scoffed.

“I beg to differ,” Megatron returned. “There are people waiting for me in Kaon.”

“And they can wait a few more hours.” Starscream slapped the adhesive edge of the bandage down and straightened up. “Let your welds set before you go traipsing about acting the hero again. What am I supposed to do if you get yourself immobilized and stuck down in Kaon for weeks on end because you couldn’t take care of one little injury?”

Megatron’s face darkened almost imperceptibly. “You sound like Outburst,” he grunted. “I’m not in any danger from a little splinter.”

“ _ Splinter!? _ ” Starscream gaped. “A  _ splinter _ did that!?”

He threw his head back and laughed.

“Here I thought you’d gone and gotten yourself gored in the leg by a pit hound, or something!”

“Pit hounds’ tusks aren’t long enough to gore through a leg,” Megatron informed him.

“Neither are most splinters.”

“Starscream, I have to go…”

“You don’t,” Starscream contradicted, not looking up as he began packing things back into his triage kit. “With your leg like that, you’re probably just as much use giving orders over the comms as you would be in person.”

“Starscream.”

“We’ve had a lot of evenings together, but not one single day, you know,” the Seeker said in a rush, and he felt Megatron pause beside him.

“No, I suppose we haven’t,” the gladiator agreed. “But don’t you have work?”

“Not if I don’t want to,” Starscream scoffed, finally looking up into Megatron’s warm eyes again. “I had an urgent errand to run after I drop off Skywarp, anyway. I’ll just tell them it ran longer than expected and they’ll have to do without me today.”

Megatron gave him a long, hard look before finally sighing in defeat.

“Alright, niblet,” he relented, reaching out to tuck some hair behind Starscream’s ear. “I’m yours for the day.”

And Starscream couldn’t hold back the genuine smile that spread itself across his face.

 

* * *

 

Naturally, Starscream did not have any "urgent" errands, but he did have one he'd been putting off for weeks and now seemed as good a time as any to finally get it done. After he’d sent Skywarp skipping up the front steps of the Academy, Starscream had his hired transport turn toward the retail district downtown.

As the owner of one of nature's nervous stomachs, Starscream was used to his weight dropping precipitously anytime he was stressed (he put muscle on as well as any mech, really, it just never  _ stayed _ on), and therefore always made sure he had clothes in certain a range of sizes available to himself. The only problem being that, a few months ago (just after he'd started his cycles, come to think of it), he had dropped to the nadir of these sizes for the first time in several millennia, forcing him to choose between either ill-fitting or out-of-fashion clothing. For a while, he'd been coping by pulling items out of his mother's closet that were old enough to be retro, but while the pants fit, most of the shirts pulled across the shoulders and dresses hadn't been in fashion for mechs since before he was born.

Plus, he'd made the mistake of wearing some of his mother's clothes when he'd had to run up to the Senate building for work one day, and one of her old coworkers ran into him in the hall and gave him the most obnoxiously pitying look ever and said, "I still wear my mom's old earrings sometimes." And that was the end of that.

It was a little over a month ago now that he'd dragged himself over to his usual venue to have a new wardrobe fitted, but somehow he just hadn't managed to find the time to pick them up. Well, now he had a new boyfriend sitting at home to wear them in front of, so no better time than the present.

"I was starting to wonder if you'd changed your mind on the whole thing," his tailor remarked when he came sweeping in.

"On a three-piece, gold-threaded Sharpcut? Never!" Starscream scoffed, allowing the familiarity because his tailor was a miracle worker. 

He did not extend such high opinion to his tailor's assistants, like the one who waited for him outside the dressing room while he tried on each of the items he'd had pinned and marked for adjustments the last time he'd been here, which was why he hadn't just arranged for one of them to bring his clothes over for a home fitting when they were first ready several weeks ago. There was no way he was going to let some gossiping assistant catch a glimpse of the year-old layer of dust that he'd been cultivating in his parents' home.

Still, he regretted that he hadn't done this sooner. It felt good to slip into clothes that didn't hang off his shoulders or shift around his hips in weird ways for the first time in months. The black and gold Sharpcut looked even better than he'd remembered. Starscream did several turns in front of the mirror array before deciding that he'd just have to wear it home to parade in front of Megatron.

"Will that be all, sir?" the assistant asked when he finally stepped out again, and Starscream was about to answer yes when another thought struck him.

"Do you have any off-the-rack undergarments in my size?" he asked.

The mech hit a few buttons on his remote, and the relevant racks slid out of the wall behind them. Starscream steered both floating displays back into the dressing room before the assistant could start making recommendations or commentary as he was apt to do. 

He had lingerie. Somewhere. It was probably easier to buy new ones now than figure out where exactly at this point, though, and that was one thing he was definitely  _ not _ borrowing from his mother's closet.

Not that he wasn't taking cues from the pieces he'd found and hastily hidden again while digging through his mother's things. After all, he was still a highly distinguished member of Vos's top societal tier, and felt he ought to reflect that even in his moments of intimacy. He needed pieces that said "desirable" without edging into the realm of "whore." If his mother's underwear drawer was anything to go by, he should be avoiding the sequined section of the rack for sure.

Even though there was a part of him that revved at the thought of a thousand points of colored light catching off his body to gleam against Megatron's darker skin...

Starscream shook himself, suppressing a stupidly immature giggle, and placed two concoctions of lace and velvet—one deep red and blue, the other black and silver—aside to be packaged and delivered to his doorstep with the rest of his clothes.

His comm pinged with a message from Megatron as he returned at last to the front of the store.

::Hurry up. I want to kiss you.::

Starscream couldn't suppress a smile as he absently handed his card over to the mech who'd assisted him at the fitting room, now on the register, and started composing a suitably pithy reply.

"Sir, do you have another card? I'm afraid there's been an error with this one."

Starscream's head snapped up to see his card being offered back to him.

"What do you mean there's an error?" he demanded. "That's a Black Card. They don't  _ get _ errors!"

"Perhaps the chip was corrupted somehow?" the assistant suggested apologetically.

They both knew that was impossible. This wasn't just any Black Card, it was Starscream's father's Black Card. The Air Commander of Vos didn't walk around with the kind of useless scrap that was prone to embarrassing malfunctions like this in his wallet.

Starscream made a noise of disgust and snatched it back anyway, tossing his mother's card across the counter instead.

According to their will, he and his brothers were allowed to use any of their assets up to a millennium after their deaths, at which point whatever remained of their nigh-on inexhaustible resources would be absorbed back into public trust. Which was  _ less _ than the default period of time that the laws of inheritance would have given them anyway.

But when the assistant scanned Daybreak's card, his smile faltered ever so slightly, and he glanced down at the piece of metal in his hand.

"My sincerest apologies for the inconvenience, sir, but would you be so kind as to allow me to scan your ID chip, please?" he asked.

Utterly mortified, Starscream couldn't even bring himself to answer for a moment. Scan his ID chip? Like some common low-caster suspected of card theft!?

"It's my mother's card," Starscream hissed. "Who is  _ dead _ , as anyone in Vos who doesn't have their head stuck under a rock would  _ know! _ "

The mech gave him a pitying smile that made Starscream want to reach across the counter and punch him, but that would have wrinkled his new suit.

"I'm aware, sir," the assistant told him, "but my system is telling me that neither of these accounts is connected to anyone living anymore. I'm afraid you don't have the right to access the funds."

Starscream's mouth fell open.

Before he could formulate a suitable reply, though, he felt a hand on his back, and someone wearing a sickeningly familiar cologne leaned around him to offer out another Black Card.

"Use mine, Silverback," Steelrim said, and at the sound of his voice, any patience or composure Starscream had left instantly evaporated.

"I don't need your  _ charity! _ " he snarled, shoving the other mech off himself.

Steelrim stared at him in scandalized shock as he ripped his own card—gold, not black—from his wallet and handed it over. Neither Steelrim nor the tailor's assistant spoke as it ran through the system without a problem, and Starscream refused to look at his former classmate as he took it back and headed for the door. Not that a lack of acknowledgement had ever been enough to stop Steelrim.

"Starscream, wait!"

A hand found his elbow as he stepped into the street, and memories flashed through Starscream's head of that pitted cologne mixed with the taste of lead and the feel of a cabinet handle digging into his back. He whirled on instinct, fist coming up to strike, and caught himself mid-swing when he saw a femme he was pretty sure worked up at the Senate staring at the two of them from a little ways up the sidewalk.

"I don't want to talk to you," he hissed at Steelrim, tearing himself free from the other mech, whose face was still frozen in that look of confused shock.

"It's just... You know why your parents' cards don't work anymore, right?" the idiot kept talking anyway.

"No, but I'm sure I can get to the bottom of it without  _ your _ help," Starscream ground out through his teeth as he started to back away. "And I told you before—the next time I punch you, it'll be with a blaster."

The expression on Steelrim's face morphed into frustration.

"Solus be Pitted! I can't keep protecting you forever, Star!" he hissed before the other Seeker could get too far from him. "Not without... Not without a legitimate reason!"

Starscream let out a bark of laughter that sounded manic even to him.

"You're the only one here that I want protection from!" he snapped. "And how very grateful you must be that I don't have parents to do it anymore! 'You can't build a city without cutting down a few trees,' right? So, tell me: am I the tree or the city, Steelrim?"

"What are you talking about, Star?"

But Starscream was already walking away at just under a run by then.

 

* * *

 

" _ That’s _ nice," Megatron told him the second he stepped back into his bedroom.

"What, this old thing?" Starscream smirked, plucking an imaginary bit of dust from one of the gently flared sleeves as he approached the armchair Megatron was seated in. "Just something I threw on for the fun of it."

Megatron made a noise somewhere between a hum and a growl and reached for Starscream's tie as soon as it came into range, using the length of silk to pull the Seeker closer still. Starscream let him, falling forward between his legs with his hands braced on the gladiator's broad shoulders to give him that kiss he'd been looking forward to so much.

"You won't mind if I rip it off again, then?" Megatron murmured against his lips when they parted momentarily.

And Starscream thought about just how many credits he had dropped on this suit—out of his own personal store, no less—and immediately pulled back.

"You wreck my suit, I  _ end _ you," he warned.

"Deal." Megatron reached to take his hand now, guiding Starscream into a perch on his good leg. A large arm encircled his waist, gently coaxing him to lean into that broad, safe chest, and Starscream felt himself finally starting to relax for the first time since Steelrim had touched his back.

"What are you reading?" he asked, taking a closer look at the tome his boyfriend had pilfered from his shelf. "Primal evolution? Ugh. I only keep that stuff around so I can reference it when I'm tearing it apart in my theses."

Megatron hummed, setting the book aside and wrapping his other arm around the smaller mech as well.

"Are you okay, Starscream?" he asked, genuine concern tinging his voice.

"Yeah, why?" Starscream demanded from within the unbreakable coccoon of his embrace.

"Your whole body is shaking."

And so it was, the treacherous thing.

"Too much charge booster in my morning fuel," Starscream shrugged. "Always gives me the shakes."

"Your errand went well, then?"

Oh, dear. Megatron was going to  _ pry _ . Well, Starscream had plenty of practice deflecting that sort of thing, and a half-truth was always more effective than a bold-faced lie.

"No, actually," he confessed, reaching a hand up to toy with a loose thread on Megatron's collar. "I ran into this guy—Steelrim—he's  _ obsessed _ with me. Convinced I'll give in and conjunx him if he throws enough money and attention at me, or something. It's just pathetic, really."

"Poor, misguided spark," Megatron chuckled, the rumble of it shaking Starscream through to the core. "Has he tried having someone chuck a paving stone at you yet?"

"Don't give him any ideas," Starscream muttered, not entirely certain Steelrim  _ wouldn’t _ resort to something so underhanded if he thought it would work. 

For the better part of their lives, he'd evoked nothing more than annoyance and occasionally amusement with his desperate antics, but that had changed abruptly after he'd tried to pin Starscream down in the kitchen a few months ago. Suddenly, the memory of every time he had teased or messed with Steelrim for amusement's sake was tinged with questions like, "What if Thundercracker hadn't been there?" or "What if I'd been just a little more overcharged?"

He gave an involuntary shudder that he hurried to disguise by reaching up to scratch his ear.

"Inner ear chills. Hate it when I get those. Anyway," he drawled, reaching up now to trace a finger lazily along the edge of Megatron's jaw. "We've got  _ hours _ to kill before we have to go get Skywarp. Whatever shall we do with ourselves?"

And Megatron made that growling noise again before lifting Starscream right up and repositioning the smaller mech to straddle his full lap.

"I told you, I'm cycling!" Starscream snapped, pushing at Megatron's chest as he realized just what that must have sounded like. The older mech just smirked at him, powerful hands preventing Starscream from scooting himself back off his thighs without any actual force.

"Do you have something against spike play, then?" Megatron asked, like that was a totally normal thing to bring up in casual conversation.

"It... doesn't do much for me," Starscream confessed, cursing the rising flush in his cheeks.

"What does?" Megatron wanted to know.

Nothing, the Seeker thought to himself bitterly.

"Valve play, I guess," he shrugged instead, wondering what the most tactful way to get off Megatron's lap right now would be.

"Tell me more," the gladiator pressed, hands gripping his boyfriend's narrow hips a little more firmly, fingers digging in a manner that was somehow unpleasantly familiar. "How do you like to be warmed up?"

_ (...warm him up for you...) _

Starscream blinked, shaking a hazy echo of deja vu from his mind.

“The usual way, I suppose,” he said, his need to appear experienced wrestling with his reluctance to give Megatron false information that could come back to bite him in the valve later.

“Well, usual for me would be my lips on your node,” Megatron smirked, his thumbs starting to rub little circles on the points of Starscream’s hip bones. “Followed by my tongue in your valve. How’s that sound?”

“Don’t be obscene,” Starscream scoffed, hyperaware of the hands moving down to caress his thighs now.

And why? Megatron was his boyfriend, had touched him like this dozens of times now. Starscream had always been planning to have sex with him. Just last night, he’d  _ sucked the mech’s spike _ and shared a bed with him for crying out loud! There was absolutely no reason to feel nervous about a hand sliding up his outer thigh…

_...a mouth on his, a hand in his shirt, the scent of cologne.... _

_ (...the scent of smoke, a hand on his throat, his hips aching with the strain of…) _

“Starscream?”

The Seeker blinked and found Megatron giving him a look of even deeper concern than before, his hands now hovering carefully just above Starscream’s legs.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

_ No! _ He wanted to shout as his spark raced in time to the foreign images flashing through his brain, mixing with actual recent memories.

“Yeah,” he said instead. “I’m just a bit tired. Hard to sleep with you snoring away beside me like a chainsaw.”

He finally pulled back, swinging his leg up and over to clamber off of Megatron’s lap.

“Let’s go eat before you end up trying to do something that puts your leg permanently out of commission.”

“My leg is just fine, thank you very much,” Megatron huffed, wincing nonetheless when he pushed himself up out of the chair to follow Starscream down toward the kitchen.

By the time they’d each had a warm cube and were curled on the couch together with rust sticks and a movie, Starscream honestly couldn’t remember what he’d been upset about, but found himself relieved that Megatron’s hands didn’t wander any lower than his waist for the rest of the day.


End file.
